John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What Deputy Broughan suggests is sensible. A couple of points struck me about what the Deputy is highlighting about the speedy transfer of information. This is all about ensuring that drivers who are legally in a position to drive are driving in a safe environment and that those who have been convicted of a particular driving offence are removed as speedily as possible from the roads throughout the country. I presume in cases of criminal activities that having the licence withdrawn, if the measure was introduced, monitored and policed effectively, would take some of the criminals off the road as well.

Deputy Broughan's amendment essentially seeks to see where the driving licence or permit has been produced. What he is talking about really is just joined-up thinking. The situation is not acceptable as we approach 2017. There are limited reasons for which a driver would be asked to produce his or her licence at the local Garda station, such as following a Garda checkpoint or a speeding offence, within a limited time period. I would particularly focus on the aspect of Deputy Broughan's proposal that highlights the need to deal with those drivers who fail to produce their licence because that is an affront, if not an additional offence.

I am supportive of the measure. As the Deputy outlined, he wants to insert in this section "names of the persons who failed to produce their licence on conviction to be forwarded by the Court to the Garda within 5 working days of the conviction and put in place a direct or electronic link between prosecutions...". This is more of the joined-up thinking that we are talking about to ensure that the systems in the Department of Justice and Equality, the courts, the headquarters of An Garda Síochána and PULSE are talking to each other so that when a conviction comes through or a driver simply does not turn up to produce a licence, the system knows and is alerted to that fact. It is certainly an amendment worth pursuing.

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